1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an ink jet recording apparatus and a recorded article produced by the ink jet recording apparatus.
2. Related Art
Business printers are required to have various functions and properties according to the use. In particular, printers intended to output drawings created by CAD (computer aided design) systems are required to produce large-sized printed matter at a high speed. The image of the printed matter is required to have a high dimensional precision with reduced drawing errors, and a high repeatability even in tracing very thin lines and writing very small characters.
Ink jet printers are suitable to satisfy these requirements. In order to trace super-fine lines with a higher precision, however, it is desirable that ink droplets be discharged so as not to deviate from a desired direction, and be prevented from splitting into smaller droplets and degrading image quality. To respond to this issue, for example, JP-A-2005-1360 proposes a technique for reducing the occurrence of ink discharge deviation. In this technique, the color material in the ink is inhibited from aggregating around nozzles by reducing the particle size of the color material to 70 nm or less. JP-A-2006-272649 proposes a technique for reducing the occurrence of banding (a phenomenon in which split ink droplets are strung to form a stripe extending in a direction in which the nozzles scan) by modifying the shape of nozzle apertures so as to control the ink flying direction.
In order for ink jet printers to perform more high-definition drawing at a higher speed, it is desirable that ink droplets having a further reduced droplet size be discharged at a higher velocity. In the above-cited techniques, however, ink droplets are split into pieces, and this hinders improvement in image quality. More specifically, in the technique disclosed in JP-A-2005-1360, while discharge deviation can be suppressed, split ink droplets are not inhibited from flying in various directions. The technique disclosed in JP-A-2006-272649 can suppress banding in image drawing. However, when in order to trace still thinner lines, split ink droplets are controlled so as not to be strung, the thin line may be undesirably doubled.